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Carlisle the epigram gave Mr. Justice Williams the version, it drew from him an exclamation very much in his mouth, favourable to the accomplishments of our aristocracy, and the uses of educating them at public schools. His Lordship is one of the many ornaments of Eton. Of his brother Judge's lines he likewise had a high opinion; but he conceived them to be less sustained than Lord Carlisle's.

There are some very able papers of his in the Edinburgh Review, especially one on the Greek orators, in 1821. We may also mention that he was the author of the Article on "Capital Punishments" in the third volume of the Law Review, No. V., and also of the memoirs of Mr. Baron Bayley, and Mr. Commissioner Boteler, in the first and third volumes.*

But it is time we should speak of this eminent person's judicial attainments; and we begin by stating, that with an abundant provision of legal learning, and practical knowledge of the profession for all ordinary occasions, and a perfectly legal understanding, he yet did not pretend to the acquirements of the profounder black-letter lawyer, to the legal genius of Holroyd, or the universal learning of Mr. Commissioner Evans. But he dealt most felicitously with facts: how complicated soever, he clearly perceived the bearing upon them of the law, and he closely and correctly applied it to them. His acquaintance with criminal and sessions' law, and all proceedings in its administration, was extensive and profound. No man ever had a larger experience in it, for he had been the leader in the great Lancashire Sessions nearly twenty years, and had been more consulted on such cases than any man of his day. As a criminal Judge, he was at once perfectly firm and humane in an exemplary degree. But

* Mr. Justice Williams enjoyed a good fortune, and he made a most liberal use of it. His purse was always open to his friends. To one of them he advanced at different times, without any security, and, indeed, wholly careless of repayment, a sum between nine and ten thousand pounds.

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one of his most learned and able brethren, when writing respecting his death, having heard a eulogy of him confined rather to his capacity as a criminal judge, protested against any such restriction, and said decidedly that the country had lost one of her best Judges. A quality which he possessed in an eminent degree, and we hope we shall neither be charged with truism nor with paradox, when we praise him for itwas constant and inflexible love of justice. All judges in this country are, in one sense, strictly just, because corruption is unknown to them; but all are not equally patient, equally calm, equally free from personal feelings towards advocates, equally exempt from the bias of party and of sect. The excellent person of whom we now speak was a model in these essential particulars, which, as our tribunals are constituted, go to make up that exalted character, the perfectly just Judge. In Banc his attention was ever awake, and his diligence was always at the command of the suitor and the court. At Nisi Prius, he distinguished himself as might be expected from one of his long experience and great merits. In the House of Lords his judgments, where there arose a difference of opinion, were justly admired for the close texture of the argument, and the uniform rejection of all extraneous matter.

While we perform the melancholy office of doing justice to one who never withheld it from others, (for no human being was ever more exempt from the vices of jealousy, envy, vanity, and pride, which too often disfigure great talents and acquirements,) we have a pleasing recollection of the aid which this distinguished Judge condescended to lend our humble labours, moved, as was his wont, by zeal for the improvement of the law, and an honest desire ever to travel onward in quest of truth.

He was a reformer both in politics and in jurisprudence, of a moderate and very cautious description, desiring strongly the extirpation of abuse and further

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ance of improvements, but most anxious that all changes should be effected in deference to reason only, and not under the pressure of popular violence; above everything, requiring that they should be in the hands of the enlightened few, and not in those of the ignorant multitude. He was most friendly, therefore, to the Society for the Amendment of the Law, and only withheld from belonging to it by the sense of the inconvenience that might arise out of his duties as a member and as a judge.

Mr. Justice Williams's death was extremely sudden. He had passed the shooting season with his valued friends, Mr. and Lady Augusta Milbanke, at the Yorkshire Moors, a family with which he had long been connected, having sat for some years for a borough of the Duke of Cleveland, her Ladyship's father. From thence he went to pass a week with Lord Brougham in Westmoreland. While there he felt a sharp pain in the chest, but this was only mentioned afterwards, for he never spoke of it at Brougham. On his way through London to his residence in Suffolk, he consulted his physicians, who considered it as connected with the liver, and of no grave importance. On his arrival at his seat he was seemingly quite well, and went out daily to shoot. After a week or ten days, he was, on the 14th of September, somewhat indisposed, but had been out riding before breakfast. He did not dine at table, there being some visitors there. Lady Williams left him pretty well in the drawing-room, and returned after dinner, but before the company retired from table. She found him apparently well, and playing with her lap-dog. She went to the dining-room, and came back for the dog in three, or, at the most, four minutes after she had left him well. No sooner did she open the drawing-room door than the animal set up a loud bark, and rushed past her violently, barking and howling all the way. She asked him what ailed the dog, but received no answer. She repeated the

question, and seeing him, as she thought, asleep, called his servant to see if his head was not too low. The man said "No, he is sleeping comfortably." She approached him, and again asked him to speak. She observed one eye nearly open, the other half closed, but his colour as usual. The servant and another thought still that he slept, but her Ladyship felt sure he was gone. So it proved, for he speedily became cold and pale, nor could any of the remedies that were applied restore him. He had complained when he awoke just before dinner that he had in his sleep dreamt of a sword piercing his breast. The examination of the body proved only that all the nobler parts, both head, chest, and abdomen, were in a state of perfect health, except a very slight enlargement of the spleen and liver, of no moment. He never had gout, nor had any of his family.

We have entered into this detail on account of the very remarkable circumstance of the dog's instinct. It is quite clear that the poor animal was aware of the fatal change some time before any observer of our own species could discover that the spirit of its master had passed from this world. Many stories have been told of such an instinctive sense, but it has never before, we believe, been established on more irrefragable evidence as the facts above detailed constitute. We may add, that if the examination of the body is to be relied on, an additional argument is presented by this case in favour of the theory which holds the ossification of the coronary arteries to be symptomatic or consequential in angina pectoris, and not the cause of that painful and fatal malady; for, in the first instance, the spasms not having been of long standing, these reasoners may argue that time had not been afforded for the process of ossification, which their doctrine assumes to be the effect, and not the cause of the spasm.

DUNNING.

MUCH less is known, at least familiarly known, concerning Dunning than almost any other of our eminent lawyers who flourished in the last century. This arises chiefly from the circumstance of his never having reached the highest honours of the profession, and having died at an age far from advanced. Yet he was a person of the very first-rate eminence at the bar, and one of the few lawyers who fully sustained in Parliament his great forensic reputation.

John Dunning (called by an absurd mistake Joseph through all the volumes of the Parliamentary History) was born at Ashburton, in the county of Devon, in October, 1731, the son of a very respectable attorney who practised there, and lived to a great age, having only predeceased his son by three years. By him the youth was placed in his office when only thirteen years old, as an articled clerk; but Sir Thomas Clarke, Master of the Rolls, being the old gentleman's client, had observed Dunning's early aptitude for business, and advised his studying for the bar. He was accordingly entered of the Middle Temple, and called in July, 1756.

He went the western circuit for some years without success; but having accidentally been employed by the East India Company in preparing their answer to the Dutch Memorial, and become thus introduced to professional connexions, he was intrusted with the argument in the case of Combe v. Pitt, in 1763, and was soon after retained as of counsel for Wilkes (with whom he had also some private intimacy), in the

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